Qualifying at Circuit de Monaco

Each year at the Monaco Grand Prix, teams and drivers seem to push for a broken up qualifying session. With the Circuit de Monaco being the narrowest track in the season, many of them are afraid of the traffic and ruining their lap times. Formula One is about racing and proving you're the best. The teams and drivers and the crème de la crème in the motorsport industry and should have the ingenuity to be able to avoid the traffic. What most teams are unable to predict though are drivers like Pastor Maldonado who was penalized 10 grid spots for driving into Sauber's Sergio Perez.

Q1 starts and you can visibly see how worried the teams are about traffic as so many of the cars were sent out on track. Just over five minutes in and Perez (who was earlier mentioned) brushed the wall and brought out a red flag. The Sauber's front left tyre hit the wall and left rear tyre removed it's self from the rim and proceeded down the track ahead of Perez. Through the commentator's, it was under stood that this was the  area of the car that was damaged during the Maldonado collision. Though you feel for the young Mexician, you get to see just how organized (and quick) the track marshals are in Monaco.

No big surprises in the Q1 knock out but what did catch many fans attention was Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel trying to get a quicker time as NOT to be knocked out in Q1. Having to put on a pair of super soft tyres, Vettel made it to fourth after Q1.

Q2 and it was Toro Rosso's turn. The teams young Frenchman, Jean-Éric Vergne, had hit something solid along track and toured slowly back to the pits with his front wing dragging underneath the Toro Rosso. Replays showed that Vergne lost his front wing in a similar fashion to di Resta in the morning practice session, approaching the chicane. The car twitched to the right and glanced the outside barrier. As Vergne was making his way back to pits, Felipe Massa came up on the wounded Toro Rosso and either did not see the yellow flags or was under so much pressure that he didn't realize the colour and narrowly escaped a full on collision into the rear of Vergne (as well as the rear of his teammate Ricciardo).

What many fans are saying that with the pressure placed on Massa by his team (as well as all the rumours that he is set to be replaced in Montreal unless his driving improves), he is willing to do nearly anything to regain his team confidence and keep his seat at Ferrari. Remarkably, this is the first time Massa has made it though to the final part of qualifying this year and Monaco is the second race in a row that Jenson Button has not made it into the top ten shoot out.

As the top ten shoot out started two of the ten drivers had penalties on their minds. Mercedes' Michael Schumacher had a five place grid penalty for his collision with Williams' Bruno Senna during Sunday's Barcelona race and Maldonado with a ten place grid penalty.

Q3 was all the excitement that the top ten shoot out would be. With the lack or drivers on the track, the teams were really able to show what they could do and the last 30 seconds to a minute, they sure did. Michael Schumacher proved that three years ago he made the right decision to come back to Formula One by gaining fastest lap in Q3 and getting pole (though only momentarily). Mark Webber showed up his teammate by having second quickest lap and Sebastian Vettel, well he wasn't able to set a time and was slotted into P10.

Mark Webber	P1
Nico Rosberg	P2
Lewis Hamilton	P3
Romain Grosjean	P4
Fernando Alonso	P5
Michael Schumacher	P6
Felipe Massa	P7
Kimi Räikkönen	P8
Sebastian Vettel	P9
Nico Hulkenberg	P10
Kamui Kobayashi	P11
Jenson Button	P12
Bruno Senna	P13
Paul di Resta	P14
Daniel Ricciardo	P15
Jean-Éric Vergne	P16
Heikki Kovalainen	P17
Vitaly Petrov	P18
Pastor Maldonado	P19
Timo Glock	P20
Pedro de la Rosa	P21
Charles Pic	P22
Narain Karthikeyan	P23
Sergio Perez	P24

Q1 107% Time is 1:20.697

Note - Maldonado drops 10 grid places for causing a collision in final practice. Schumacher drops five grid places for causing a collision at last round. Perez failed to set a time within 107% requirement - races at stewards' discretion.